Poland worker in many Pot THE WORKERS RESPOND by F. DUPAIN On the night of June 26, the day after the increases in food prices were rescinded(1), there was dancing in the streets of Warsaw. The Polish working class mode no mistake about the meaning of the bureaucrocy's retreat. This retreat, won in an incredibly short time and at much less cost than in December 1970(2), showed that neither the bureaucracy nor the working class had forgotten the revolt of the workers in the Baltic ports. Immediately after the official announcement by Premier Jaroszewicz that the prices of basic food products were to go up, the broadest strike since 1970 paralyzed dozens of factories in all regions of the country. In some Instances (the Ursus tractor factory near Warsaw is the best known example), the workers did not merely stop work and fold their arms. Some workers participated in street demonstrations in their cities (in Rodom they burned the building housing the Communist party headquarters); others, such as the workers of Ursus, blockaded nearby railroads in order to popularize their struggle. The timing of the price increases had been "psychologically" well chosen this time, unlike in December 1970. The students had already left on vacation and many workers were preparing for their annual leaves. In addition, the population had been bombarded with an intense "explanatory" campaign.
For months the press and the party leaders had been insistently harping on the need to "rationalize" the domestic market, which they said inevitably required a return to "true prices." The growing shortage of certain food products, meat in particular, fueled this insidious campaign, which suggested that the Poles were overindulging in consumption, encouraged by prices that had remained too low. Viewed within a technocratic logic, the arguments of the bureaucracy could seem irrefutable. The relative discretion, and even comprehension, of the bourgeois press is characteristic in this regard. According to the June 26 issue of Le Monde (which came off the press on June 25), the Polish government had no other choice. In the view of the bourgeois press, the credibility (the exact term used by Le Monde) of the Polish bureaucracy in face of its many and uneasy western creditors was at stake. But since that day in June, the spell is broken. The spell of Gierek - "efficient, "a good manager, " "popular. " The model of consumption he tried to impose on a people frustrated by the "benefits" of the West could not be led to completion. The anesthetie didn't work In fact, the Polish bureaucracy belleved it was sufficient to make a few economic concessions to a working class that was decidedly too militant. Locking support from this working class (and very few bureaucrats really believe that there is such support, the bureaucracy turned toward the "new layers of technicians" and a part of the intelligentsia. The consumer model proposed - which included happiness as conceived by Fiat Polski, completely private apartments, a house in the countryside, and easier trips abroad - partially corresponded to the aspirations of a social layer that felt left out during the Gomulka era. Incapable of proposing genuinely socialist solutions to the problems of daily life and ofFering mass transit that was certainly cheap but often badly organized and crowded, apartments that were tiny and uncomfortable, and an anarchic domestic market with low-quality products, the bureaucracy was unable to prevent the development of a life style and mode of consumption similar to that vaunted by western mogazines as an alternative to the bureaucracy's own flat grey. Moreover, one may ask whether this model has not become the ideal even of this bureaucracy, whose lifestyle increasingly resembles that of petty-bourgeois nouveaux riches. When the Gierek team was called to power, the bureaucracy assigned it two essential tasks: anesthetize a working class that had shaken the bureaucracy's power; reorganize an economy inadapted to the needs of the country. All the objectives of planning had to be reexamined. Not only did planning have to attend to the most burning needs of the population, it also had to promote a policy of full employment. The 1971-1975 plan, worked out under the reign of Gomulka, had called for a small rise in income and a soaring of unemployment from 600 workers to 700, 000! Gierek was
Instructed to "build a new Poland, "(3) If is no accident that one-fourth of all existing enterprises have been constructed during the past five years. In fact, the very significant industrial boom the country has experienced has been achieved at the cost of a growing foreign debt to the West and a greater and greater dependence on the world market. (4) Constantly subjected to the pressure of a working class whose December 1970 victory had rendered it no longer passive, a working class that did not hesitate to stop work in order to make itself heard(5), the bureaucracy thought it had found a miracle solution: western credits. At top speed, the bureaucracy threw itself into feverish construction of housing, the plans for which may have seemed charming at first glance. In reality, the foundation rested on quicksand and the materials used were of doubtful quality. The working class had nothing at all to say about this system, this attempt at a "new look." None of the political or trade-union demands raised by the workers of the Baltic ports in 1970 were satisfied. (6 The only thing that changed was the tone in which the bureaucracy addressed the workers. Where it had been authoritarian and dogmatic in the past, it became persuasive and intimate. The economic imbalance The structural imbalances the country suffers have not been eliminated. Purely Polish problems are tacked onto the general incapacities of the bureaucratic system. Agriculture, still under the grip of archaic structures, employs a plethora of laborers whose productivity is one of the lowest in Europe.(7) The peasantry, suspicious because of the experience of forced collectivization during the Stalinist period, rejects any process of placIng the land under common ownership. The regime's inability to deliver all the necessary fertilizer and machinery to the peasants made them a social class increasingly prepared to resort to the weapon of delivery strikes, in spite of the many odvantages the peasants have accumulated during the past several years. Although Poland traditionally had a largely favorable trade balance in the sector of food and agricultural products, during the years 1971-75 it piled up a deficit of S1, 500 million, the essential part of which was repayable in 1974 and 1975. The world crisis of capitalism accelerated the process of demystification of this experience. Credits have become more difficult to obtain during the past two years. Exports to the West, which were intended to provide the wherewithal to repay these loans, declined so much that Jaroszewicz estimated the net loss at 51, 500 million for 1974 and 1975, that is, 15 percent of total Polish exports to the western countries. The increases in the prices of raw materials also dealt a hard blow to the Polish economy. Like all the other countries of Comecon, Poland had to pay 130 percent more for the great quantities of gas and oil imported from the USSR, not to mention the consequences of capitalist inflation on the prices of the capital goods Poland bought on the western market. In spite of a clear improvement in the living conditions of the workers (average wages increased about 40 per-
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POLAND cent in five years), the Gierek team was unable to overcome the weight of the past left by the Gomulka era. The country is still suffering from inflation (the money supply has more than doubled in four years; in spite of a real effort, the problem of housing remains one of the most painful aspects of working-class life (despite the enormous destruction wreaked by the war, Poland has constructed much less than most European countries; the number of persons per housing unit in Poland is the highest in Europe, along with the USSR). Supply of the market remains precarious, especially since the demands of consumers have risen. Attacking the workers' gains In spite of the promises of December 1970 and January 1971, the bureaucracy has launched insidious attacks on the gains of the workers. Some social benefits, health insurance for example, have been seriously cut. Prices are not stable any more. Even according to official staristics, they have increased 13,2 percent in five years. The sectors most heavily affected have been services and transport. Some subsidies have been cuf to the bone. The situation of women workers has not improved much: official propaganda exudes an ideology worthy of religious images — the mother taking care of her numerous progeny is glorified, while child-care centers are increasingly few and badly equipped. Incapable of attending to the essential needs of the population, the bureaucracy resorted to expedients, not least private initiative. Henceforth, the state will no longer rent out low-cost housing. Only co-ownership will be possible. The private sector has been called upon to contribute. A low has just been passed permitting any foreigner to invest in the country with a guarantee of exporting an important part of the profits. When one takes account of the fact that this appeal concerns mainly the services sectors (hotels, restaurants, garages, small shops, etc.), one can imagine the eminently "socialist" result of such an experiment in a country in which about 200,000 citizens have official currency accounts in the state bank. The economic reform, officially enacted in 1973, is marking time. Decentralization was effected to the advantage of the largest enterprises in each branch. The discussion within the bureaucracy on this point seems not to be over. After a long period of convalescence, the intelligentsia seems to have recovered from the traumas of the 196869 period. Broken by the repression if suffered after the student demonstrations of March 1968 and mutilated by the emigration of some of its representatives, the intelligentsio remained passive during the December 1970 events. Its irruption last winter, during the affair of the new constitution, testifies to its new vitality but also reveals the crisis undermining Polish society. An initial appeal, signed by fifty-nine intellectuals, attacked the new provisions of the constitution, which were to establish "eternal friendship with the Soviet Union" and impose certain obligations on each citizen toward the regime. The "59" also demanded that some fundamental liberties be guaranteed, among them the right to strike. This appeal was followed by several others signed by university teachers and students, among them the appeal of Lipinski, one of the veterans of the Polish workers movement. Nevertheless, the most promising was the appeal signed by workers and intellectuals in Lodz. The solidarity expressed by the workers with the intellectuals, some of whom had signed the "appeal of the 59, " is characteristic of a new state of spirit, of the consciousness that, as in 1956, only unity with the workers can make the bureaucracy back down. Weak link in the bureaucratic chain, Poland is on the eve of great changes, which are only the reflection of the deep crisis of the bureaucratic regimes. Its working class has never really been broken since 1956. Just the contrary, every time it has gone into mation, it has forced the bureaucracy to retreat. From now on, nothing will be as before. FOOTNOTES:
1. The prices of practically all food products were to have gone up, from 30 to 100 percent (meat 60 percent, butter 100 percent). Only milk and bread were left untouched.
2. The increase was announced on the night of June 25 and rescinded twenty-four hours later. Officially, there were "only" two dead and several dozen wounded in Radom, the city where the incidents took a particuTarly violent turn. Several hundred "hooligans" were arrested. In the Baltic ports in 1970 the repression resulted in hundreds of dead.
3. This "exhilarating" slogan has been the leitmotiv during the past few years. It is characteristic of the demagogy of a bureaucracy in search of a "new look."
4. Poland's foreign debt to the West is estimated at S6, 000 million. The Comecon share in total frode fell from 63 percent in 1970 to 49 percent in 1975.
5. During past years, not a month has passed without a strike breaking out in some enterprise. The best known, for it was the most spectacular, was the dockers strike in Gdansk, which paralyzed the port in August 1974 so thoroughly that troops had to be called in to unblock it.
6. Among these demands were: for a genuinely independent trade union; for real trode-union freedom. The workers also demanded that there be no prosecution of the members of the strike committee, In fact, the most active militants were prosecuted.
7. Some 34 percent of the active population is still employed in agriculture, about 80 percent of which is private, based on small plots of less than 10 hectares each. Productivity is not even half that of some other countries of East Europe (East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary). In 1974 overall agricultural production increased only 1.6 percent (the plan had called for a 4.3 percent increase); in 1975 it fell 2.4 percent compared with 1974.